Nightmare Before Christmas cake

This week we had a work gathering with Halloween themed foods so I decided it was time to break out some of my old cake decorating materials.

I haven't made a big cake in a long time, so the amount of time it took to put this together was kind of a surprise...I'm sure I was faster at most of these techniques when I was making cakes more frequently but it swallowed up my evenings and early mornings for several days. 

I made the Jack Skellington and Zero figures out of fondant and set them aside to dry almost a week before I needed the cake in order to let everything dry and solidify.

                                               

Jack was a challenge; his body is so long and thin and the head is so heavy that I really didn't know if he would make it to the destination in one piece. It was a horrible ten minutes of driving, parking and carrying the cake into the building (also some swearing and muttering) but I made it with no major incidents! There is no better feeling when it comes to making these things than dropping the cake off intact and then simply walking away.